The Alicorn Warrior
Written by iAmSiNnEr
Co-authored by computerneek
Edited by Skittlebug
Chapter 1: Discovery and Revelations
It might have been a valley of little more than rock and dirt in the sweltering sun of a Badlands afternoon, but that didn’t stop the local populace from flourishing. Dragons, kirins, and ponies alike wandered the valley floor, exploring a marketplace made up of similarly varied vendors. There was no law to break in the Badlands, so many of the products sold would have been confiscated by the border patrol of most countries. Not that it mattered - anypony desperate enough to come here had been banished from the League of Nations, led by Equestria, and so couldn’t cross the border anyways.
This was not so for a group of six ponies and a dragon walking in one end of the marketplace. Many of the existing shoppers ignored them; one or two opportunistic ponies approached them, believing them to be new banishees, from their disheveled appearances. They declined all the ‘help’ offered, though, and shopped around for a few minutes before huddling together outside a cafe that served enchanted drinks.
"Ah don't think she’d be here, Rainbow,” Applejack muttered, glancing nervously around the valley; there was something about this place that put her on edge. “This place is just screaming dangerous to me.”
"Well, it’s the best lead we’ve got so far,” Rainbow answered, also glancing around nervously. “This place is on my nerves too- but at this point, it’s probably the only place we haven’t looked.”
“And the first place we’ve been to that doesn’t appear on any map,” Pinkie scowled, her mane hanging uncharacteristically flat against her neck. It’d been doing that a lot. “I feel like a party wouldn’t be welcome here.”
“It took us the better part of four years to find this town,” Starlight grumbled. “What’re the chances Twilight is here?” She paused. “Yes, Fluttershy?”
Fluttershy, who had been trying to gain her friends’ attention in the least attention-grabbing manner possible, flinched at the sudden attention. “Somepony was talking about being unable to see a match with ‘Sparkle’ at the hotel over there.” She pointed a hoof.
“A match?” Rarity asked. “What kind of… match?” She spoke the word with a certain flair of distaste.
“That’d have to be a gladiatorial battle,” Starlight scowled. “We already know those are pretty popular around here.” She glanced at Rainbow. “Dash, were there any arenas in the area?”
Rainbow shook her head. “Nope. I can check again, though.”
“Let’s hope that’s not necessary,” Applejack muttered, and stepped slightly aside to stop another patron on his way past them, into the cafe. “Hello, Sir- we were interested in watching the match, but seem to have lost the info. Could you point us to it…?”
The patron, a grey earth stallion with a grumpy facial expression, snorted. “We don’t have an arena here,” he stated. “Too flashy. It’s twenty leagues due east. All the brochures are at the Arena.”
“Got it, thank you,” Applejack nodded her head thankfully, and withdrew; the stallion continued on his way. She turned back to her friends, the pinkest of which now had a slightly fluffy mane. “Here’s hoping we’re not chasing shadows… again.”
Starlight nodded. “Celestia help us.”
The better part of four years earlier...
Starlight Glimmer checked the clock on the wall once again, and scowled at the door. “Lesson one, and you’re late,” she grumbled. “Unless…” She shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t have forgotten about it. And you wouldn’t be avoiding me either, I think. So why half an hour…?”
Finally tired of talking to herself in an empty library, she trotted out. Perhaps Twilight had meant to refer to a different one of the Castle’s four separate libraries- something which made no sense to her, since they could be made into a single, larger library without issue- when she’d told her where her first lesson would take place.
But as she checked the various libraries, they were all empty.
As she walked steadily up the passage from the fourth one, Starlight couldn’t help but feel like something was… off. She checked the kitchen as she passed; empty. She knocked on Twilight’s bedroom, no response.
She pushed the door open.
Empty.
Where had Twilight gone?
She cantered down to the Cutie Map. That would tell her.
She was feeling distinctly uneasy.
She quickly cast her spell on the map.
Nothing.
Twilight was out of range.
Which shouldn’t have been possible- this thing could find anypony on the entire continent!
She had just barely drawn in her breath to call for Spike when it happened.
She felt her Cutie Mark respond to the magic of the Map. It was calling her.
Seven cutie marks formed over the map- no, six; the last one was Spike’s head.
Five of the six Elements of Harmony were represented in the floating symbols. Twilight’s Mark was absent, having been replaced by her own.
The seven symbols spread out and started circling the entire map.
The entire map.
At the same time, to Starlight’s horror, Twilight’s throne darkened, the purple gemstone fading to grey.
Spike trotted in, stifling a yawn. “Mornin’, Starlight,” he greeted. “Got a call from the…” He trailed off, staring at the map.
Starlight looked back at it. “Twilight’s gone.”
Right at that moment, Twilight’s cutie mark appeared, right on top of the Castle- then whisked off towards the badlands, and faded into nothing about halfway there, before repeating.
“Is that a clue?” Spike asked, jumping up on the table to look.
“Spike,” Starlight muttered, half-stunned. “Take a letter. To Princess Celestia.”
It took Spike about three seconds to retrieve a quill and parchment from his mini-throne. “Got it.”
Princess Celestia arrived in a flare of bright golden light at about the same time as Applejack, the last Element Bearer to arrive, trotted in the door. “What in tarnation-?” Applejack began, staring at the Cutie Map spectacle.
“Twilight is gone,” Starlight stated, without preamble, before looking up at Princess Celestia.
Princess Celestia looked… vulnerable.
“What-?” Starlight asked. “Princess Celestia?”
Princess Celestia took a deep breath, tears rolling down her face. “I… I made a horrible mistake,” she stated.
“What is it?” Rarity asked.
“I…” Celestia began. “I banished Twilight last night. F-For using time magic.”
Starlight blinked. “That-!” she began, but Celestia cut her off.
“That was a terrible mistake,” Celestia declared. “And-!” She took a deep, shuddering breath.
“That was me,” Starlight stated. “I used the time magic, and nearly destroyed Equestria in the process. If you want to banish me instead, go ahead. Everypony knows I deserve it.”
Celestia stared for a second. “And compound my mistake? Absolutely not!” Her voice had some steel in it as she refused, but that quickly disappeared again. “When I did it, I was… influenced. I don’t know what did it- banishment is a last resort, and time magic has a habit of punishing its own abusers, so I don’t usually enforce it. But something- something made me banish her.” She sighed towards Starlight. “Meaning, even if I hadn’t made such a mistake, I would never banish you for time magic.”
“Well, can’t you just, you know, un-banish her?” Rainbow asked.
“I can’t,” Celestia stated. “The magic of Equestria doesn’t know her. That’s why the Element of Magic has gone dormant.” She gestured towards Twilight’s throne. “She can’t enter our land unless the magic of the land knows her. And the only way to teach it about her…” She took another deep breath, visibly steeling herself. “I… I have a mission for you. For all of you.” She looked across them. “I… I will make you seven Wardens of the Land. Your mission… is to find Twilight, and bring her back.”
“But if she can’t cross-?” Starlight began, leaving the rest unsaid.
She nodded. “The… the only way to teach the magic of her once again… is for a Warden of the Land to touch her whilst standing on Equestrian soil.” She looked across them. “That is your mission.”
“That sounds simple enough,” Spike stated. “Where is she?”
“I have no idea,” Celestia informed them. She looked at the map. “That… looks like a clue, but she could be anywhere out there. One moment.” She closed her eyes, and her horn glowed brightly.
Back in Modern Times…
Six mares and a dragon stopped on the approach to the massive arena they’d finally located, after almost two full days of hiking east.
“Listen,” Rarity, who had signaled for them to stop, hissed.
They all went silent, and listened. They could hear a chant coming from the distant arena.
“Spar-kle! Spar-kle! Spar-kle!”
It repeated over and over.
“Well,” Rainbow muttered. “We’ve found something named Sparkle. That’s new.”
Everyone looked at her.
She looked back at them. “Let’s get moving!” she barked, and took to the air with a shockwave of rainbow energy.
Draw out the fight, Twilight told herself. Give them what they want. They’ll pay better.
She really didn’t like participating in these fights, but Celestia had thrown her out, and she had been unable to reach her friends- it was all she had left.
And even if she had been able to reach her friends, it wasn’t like she could cross the border back into Equestria. Her biggest regret was that she had never been able to say goodbye.
She expertly dodged the massive dragon’s smashing claw, and snarled at it. “Close one,” she stated aloud, even though it was actually nothing of the sort; she’d only made it look like it was one.
The spectators roared. They loved the style she’d developed, where she’d make it look like she was losing, before becoming ‘desperate’, turning the tide, and winning by the slimmest of margins, She only rarely killed or permanently injured her opponents; usually, she was able to knock them out… which had the extra effect of looking like she was only barely strong enough to defeat them.
Over the noise of the spectators, she heard a sudden boom in the distance. A sudden, familiar boom.
She dodged the next swipe on autopilot, sending a magic pulse out to scan the area around the arena. That could not have been a Sonic Rainboom.
Her pulse got back.
It was.
Twilight’s game had suddenly changed. Her friends- the other Element Bearers- must be nearby. And, for their own safety, she could not allow them to interfere with this fight. Which, she knew they would try. Just like she would, had she walked in on Rainbow fighting a gladiatorial battle in the Badlands.
Fortunately, that was fairly easy. None of them had entered the arena, or its immediate airspace, just yet- so a simple dome shield over the entire thing was enough.
She flapped out of her draconian opponent’s reach. One of his wings had been chopped in half during a fight with another dragon the month before, rendering him flightless. She gazed at him, sized him up… and realized that taking into the air had been a stroke of genius. Her goal had shifted to ending the fight as quickly as possible, without letting on that anything had changed- and the old dragon had attempted to follow her into the air, only to crash right back to the ground on his injured wing.
“Ah-Hah!” she announced, flying higher to avoid his fire breath and conjuring magic missiles with which to bombard him. The discovery of a crippling weakness would always bring a swift end to a fight.
He still put up an impressive fight. She made it look like she had to maneuver hard to avoid his fire breath, flapping at least three times as often as was necessary for the maneuvers she was performing. The crowd roared, chanting her name continuously. She felt a couple of impacts against her shield, then another signature she’d memorized so long ago.
Starlight Glimmer had come as well, and was trying to find a way through her shield.
She used a rapid sequence of completely ineffective magic missiles to shroud herself in confusion. While they were ongoing, she layered her spellwork, teleporting a quill, parchment, and ink to her. She scrawled just two words on the parchment, before teleporting all three away once again… though the parchment went straight to Starlight, rather than back to where it had come from.
Starlight was, after all, the only one that might have a chance of penetrating her shield.
Wait.
-Twilight.
I just hope they can stomach what they just saw.
Welp. Looks like the Mane 5 and Spike have just gotten the fast introduction to Twilight's new lease on life.
I can't wait for the new twilight to meet up with Celestia oh the regeret on her face is gonna be priceless. Love the chapter.
10330399
realisiticly celestia should have been the one to look for her as it is her fault but this could turn out more brutal for her if she has to hear about it then deny's untill she sees for herself but then again she does have a contry to run
I do hope they can convince Twilight she can return home.
YES!!
A WILD CHAPTER APPEARED! READ IT?
[YES?/NO?]
YOU HAVE SELECTED YES! WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE FUTURE UPDATES?
[YES?/NO?]
YOU HAVE SELECTED YES!! HAVE FUN READING
BY THE WAY, I LOVE THIS BOOK! AND MY CAPS WON'T TURN OFF...
This story is a run read!
......I'm gonna guess the apartment owner has the ability to turn into a giant black dragon?
10330490
Probably. Or maybe the Apartment IS the giant black dragon. You never know with ponies
I approve of this chapter!
10330417
On the over hand, celestia has to run a country, she can't just disapier for long times to look for a pony, for that she has guards
Might want to have it so Twi notices them come in, as I doubt she would hear them yell her name specifically with all the noise the fans are making.
Big fan base
Story's going fast, in my eyes.
Still. It's not bad so far.
~Skeeter The Lurker
A bit fast, but intriguing. It's gonna be fascinating to see how Twilight came to be bitter about her friends when they didn't do anything to her and how she seems to have gained enough cred to make Gray Hat fear her killing him for speaking out.
And Celestia's realization hit her like a ton of bricks to the face. Nice work on adding a reason as to why Celestia would be so callous about sending Twilight away without listening. Maybe it could have used more depth, like maybe Celestia also being slow on sleep after dealing with some politics on top of all that for days on end without sleep, causing her to act impulsively and illogically. Still, it's good to have gotten a reason as to why. It's gonna be interesting to see her reaction after learning about and seeing what's become of Twilight.
I am still very much intrigued about where this story is going and the build up of the structure is fine; you just need to slow down at some points to let everything sink in, build up the world around you, and then go faster when it is required. Looking forward to seeing how Twilight and her friends react to one another after so long. ^_^
10330686
Might depend on how long it's been since her banishment. The only thing Twilight was guilty of was correcting the timeline that Starlight was screwing up and her reward was being banished for doing so without being given the chance to defend herself by the one she idolizes most. For all intents and purposes, she put everything on the line to fix time and she gets a punishment arguably worse than death. I might have read over it, but for a change as drastic as this, a lot of time had to have passed. Months? Years? That's plenty of time to break the Princess of Friendship and have her rebuild herself as the Gladiator Queen or whatever.
10330686
10330651
maybe he or she is using the Pulp formula of storytelling
10330754
Possible. And nothing wrong with that.
I'd just be partial to seeing more of her go from pacifist to murder happy gladiator.
~Skeeter The Lurker
10330748
Twili friends said they had been looking for her for a few years. so your theory has, weight
10330784
Uh.
You... didn't? Nnnnnot sure why you'd think that.
~Skeeter The Lurker
I have never been a fan of alicorn Twilight, but I like this version of her.
Yeah, this is a bit fast-paced. You ought to give us some more description. Describe the scenery a bit more.
And be wary of who you focus on. If Grey Hat is going to be an important character, you should have us get to know him a little bit more. If he's so infamous, why would he cave so easily? Even if it was the Elements of Harmony, if he was the kind of character you made him out to be (with what little info we were given), he probably would have taken advantage of their lack of common knowledge and asked for something in return before telling them where Twilight was. Then if he was threatened (likely by Rainbow, I would think), he would be more likely to cave, since he clearly knows what the Elements are capable of. If he isn't that crucial of a character, you probably didn't even need to give us as much info as you did. (Or it's possible I misinterpreted what kind of character he was, but that's how he came across to me)
Either way, this is an interesting concept. I'll stick it in my Tracking shelf.
There feels like a timing issue here with Twilight being vanished taking time to find a city. How long between Twilight's banishment and everyone noticing her missing I'd assume less than a day then an undetermined time searching the bad lands. It feels like no time at all before they've found her and now she;s champion of the arena
10330846
It did say it took less than a day to notice she was gone and about 5-6 years to locate the city. The badlands are a large desert-ish area from what we've see in the show/movie, so the settlements could range from small (like kludgetown) to large and being teleported to a non-descript part could make the person in question hard to track. Plus with a unknown amount of unmapped settlements it could take quite a long time to locate someone, even if they wanted to be found.
Beautiful
So... if she blew through the magic inhibitor ring in the previous chapter.. any particular reason she didn't just teleport away there and then? You did just show he teleporting away now, so it's possible.
Why stay in the arena for several years?
Slow down a bit more. Still feels rushed. Show a bit more to go with the telling.
10331000
where do you think she would go? She's banished from Equestria, or at least she thinks she is. Eventually she'll recondition herself to stay there and make a name for herself even after she pays off her debt to the guy who captured her
Absolutely everything is fast in this story. May it be the pacing, the characters, the reactions, the emotions, everything.
This is writting in its purest form, actions, then consequences, it's weird because I'm so used to people taking several chapters to move, it's a welcome change but I'm winded dood.
I need more drama, more... build-up ! A story need those slow moments to shake the reader when you speed up for an action scene, the reader is your guest, your story is a mansion and you are the owner. Give us a tour of your nice home, comment about the paintings, then advance through a corridor while ignoring the obvious door on the way, and while our curiosity is at its peak, you open a door without warning with something very interesting to show.
I'm positive you can do it, because despite the speed, people enjoy the tour.
Along with the rather rushed pacing, I've a hard time buying Celestia instantly condemning a mare she cared for and pretty much loved like a daughter for years, stripping her from her princess' title and banishing her to the Badlands without even letting her a chance to prove her innocence, just because she was frustrated with Luna and the guards.
10331008
So she develops a taste for blood over the years? noice,
10331044
its your choice to think what Celestia was thinking that day. Maybe she was fustrated,or it could be something else. I'll leave the space for you to guess :)
hello 10331107
I read the story a second time and I have a question. out of curiosity, why this Twili hates her friends
I can understand you wanted us to understand that it's taken years to find Twilight but it's not clear. The out of order sequence of Twilights friends searching for her, then the backflash of the day after her banshiment followed by a return 'current day's without any clear time transitions make it seem like it should be just a few days after she was banished and not years later.
If it's going to take years of searching for Twilights friends to find her, the you need some background on how they have changed, aged or been effected by these passing years.
I get the feeling This was a 4 k Word chapter story and sory for bad eng
Are you not entertained? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?....is this not why you are here?!?
10331160
don't worry, the chapters ahead will explain some of this. Prologue and chap 1 is just the settings
*slaps tracking button*
10331215
My name Twilight Sparkle. Banished Princesses of Friendship! Wilder of Magic of the Elements of Harmony. Former student to tyrant Princesses of the Sun Celestia! Marked traitor to fellow ponies! Marked traitor to friends!
And I will have my vengeance, in this life or next....
The setup seems a bit contrived. While the banishing of Twilight Sparkle can work, there needs to be a much more stable reason for it. Here it's the fifth season finale and then Celestia suddenly gets incredibly impatient and just boom banished. You've been told it is rushed, something that is absolutely true, but there are a few things that you could have done (and probably still do if you go back and work it out) to slow things done and have characters act like somewhat sensible. Just need to find a creative solution to a few questions:
What is the reason for Twilight's banishment? Your answer is "Celestia detected time magic and is FOCKING PISSED BECAUSE SHE TOLD TWILIGHT--" Okay okay okay but what if I told you this can be improved upon by more than just poor, long-suffering Celestia - too frequently portrayed as a naive pacifist or a surprise tyrant - going "I'm frustrated"?
Why is the punishment just insta-banishment? At this point it's simply so you can have a story. You wanted to write something, you had an idea about HOW it could begin, but then you reached this hurdle: You wanted to get to the meat of the story which was Twilight in exile and her friends finding her, but taking time to explain this "why" would take too long. You're not the first author to completely rush to what you want to write without a care for how much sense it makes (in fact, most do when they first start). However, the result of doing that will make your story suffer.
Ironically, you could have skipped straight to her being found in exile and let the events that lead to her banishment be a slowly-unfolding mystery and it would have been also alright.. Austraeoh did it.
How can this be made more clever or intriguing? Say you tweak this enough so it's not simply the fifth season finale that kicks this off suddenly, but maybe there's something else lurking in the background. Maybe there's a third party that has arranged for Twilight to be removed and has either strongarmed Celestia, has tricked her, or some other third thing cough Changelings maybe cough that has arranged for this to happen? Throw in some sort of wild card. Whatever the case, it should be hinted at early on, or maybe outright revealed to the reader for dramatic irony.
You have a spark of imagination in regards to a story about Twilight becoming a fearsome pitfighter with a grudge. It just needs tweaking so it doesn't become like a story that will baffle people a year from now with how popular it became to the point it was featured, getting MANY upvotes but ultimately falling short of the epic it could have been. You've got the imagination, now you need to work your butt off to hone your craft.
I suggest you read Upheaval: Breaking Point by Visiden Visidane. It has a bit in common with your story: Twilight Sparkle does something, and Princess Celestia is forced to banish her for fear of a Millennia-old secret causing a... well... Upheaval. It may open your eyes to how you can broaden the horizons for your story.
While the story has an interesting premise I'm afraid I do have to agree with everyone else that it's quite rushed. The action and it's resulting consequence are sentences right next to each other, usually short and direct. Adding a thought process, or describing a scene would definitely help. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to write out every explicit detail (this in itself can be a pitfall as you find several paragraphs of descriptive text that eventually becomes boring) but I noted aside from "impressive", you immediately assume everyone should know what an "arena" looks like. Granted, most do, but I believe it's not the best method to open a scene.
On this chapter (1), something that isn't clear to me is the passing of time. While one may be swift to adapt, you have already shown Twilight is rather broken about killing in the prologue. This chapter, or simply due to it's pacing, has Twilight drop her moral ideals way too fast in the name of survival, or several months have passed which was left for the reader to assume. It actually seems like this happens just days, at most a week or so, since Twilight got banished. The most notable sense of time is stating that the uninhabited areas were already ruled-out by Twilight's friends, which doesn't even really specifically state it took any time at all. It's not wrong to add some detail via dialogue, but it definitely isn't very present here. The only other hint we get that it's probably been awhile, is that Twilight didn't recognize her friends. Maybe it's just me, but life changing relationships tend to stick around in memory even after a considerable amount of time passes, so this must be very far in the future if Twilight didn't even show a hint of recognition.
I'm no writer so I have no right to give suggestions, but I hope you do take the "proper" writer's advice, they make sense and probably would add to a more enjoyable read.
10331455
thanks for the advice, but keep reading and you'll see what you want to see in future chapters. my style of writing... let's just say its unothordox
Definitely needs some tweaking, as the pacing is perhaps a little too breakneck. And the banishment is a bit on the contrived side.
But it’s an interesting premise, I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
This seems good. The prequel. Well it was a prequel. The first chapter needs to be worked. Possibly extended.
10331540
You've said this is your first shot at writing so I doubt it's unorthodox, but knock yourself out. I'll keep my eyes open.
It's amazing to see the jump in writing skill between the chapters I am extremely impressed and eagerly awaiting another update.